Days Of The Draft Board Heading For History Books

On Jan. 20, 1958, when a 23-year-old ex-truck driver from Tupelo, Miss., was ordered to report to the draft board in Memphis, it made front page news around the world.

The draftee, of course, was Elvis Presley, already a cultural icon. Ironically, he was also a precursor of the rock 'n' roll, draft card-burning youth rebellion that would shake society a decade later.

When Elvis was drafted, it was peacetime. There was no war or major threat to the nation's security. But the Selective Service System called on Elvis to drop his astonishing $100,000-a-month career to serve his country as a $78-a-month Army recruit. And he put down his guitar and put on the uniform with no complaint.

Such was the power of the military draft in the 1950s. And such was the pull then of the young men's sense of patriotic duty to serve their country. No matter how rich or poor you were, or what race or creed, if your nation called on you to serve, in those days you went.

The idea that the rectitude of the draft and universal military service could be challenged seemed almost preposterous then. But last week, the U.S. House of Representatives may have put the first nails into the coffin of the Selective Service System and the draft as a socially leveling institution.

The House Appropriations Committee earlier this year stripped Selective Service of its $29 million annual budget, giving it, instead, $5 million to cease operations and provide its 267 employees with severance pay. Rep. Gerald Solomon (R-N.Y.) tried to save the agency by restoring $20 milliion to its budget, but the House last Monday voted "no" to his proposal by a vote of 207-202.

The Selective Service is the agency that maintains the master lists of 14 million young men eligible for military service. American males are required by law to register their names with the service on their 18th birthdays.

The list is kept up to date by 100 agency employees at its Great Lakes offices north of Chicago. The agency also oversees the training of 11,000 volunteers serving on the nation's 2,000 draft boards.

While no American has been drafted in the last 20 years, the agency claims if it were called on in a national emergency, it could supply 100,000 or more men from its lists and have them in uniform within 13 days.

Surprisingly little national attention has been paid or emotion spent in the debate on the future of the agency. Some veterans groups such as the American Legion are protesting the moves to shut down the Selective Service, but not very loudly or with much vigor.

"The American Legion has always been in support of the (Selective Service System)," Lew Wood, a Legion spokesman, said last week. Wood said the Legion will make its feelings known when the Senate takes up debate on the fate of selective service, possibly later this month.

"Defense of the nation requires a system of military manpower procurement," Wood said. "The Selective Service System is an inexpensive way of being prudent and prepared."

Charles Moskos, Northwestern University's influential military sociologist, also thinks it might be a mistake to discard the system.

"I'm pro-draft just on principle," Moskos said. "I think it's good symbolically that the youth of the nation, no matter what circumstances they come from, know that they may be called on for national service."

On the other side, since the Vietnam War era, many religious and peace groups have continued to oppose the draft on moral and ideological grounds.

But the arguments that seem to be swaying Congress to ditch selective service are fueled more by the idea that the draft makes as much sense today as fighting a high-tech war with bolt-action rifles.

Those sentiments are based in large part on studies done by Elliot Feldman, a Harvard political scientist who spent a year studying manpower procurement in the Pentagon in 1984.

"Nine years ago," said Feldman, now an attorney practicing international law in Washington, "we knew this (selective service) operation made no sense, but politically it was untouchable at the time."

Feldman's study never questioned that Selective Service System lists could produce hundreds of thousands of potential draftees on short notice. Instead, it questioned the ability of the armed forces to absorb so many draftees on short notice.

"Twelve or 13 bases were supposed to absorb (the draftees)," Feldman said, "and I visited seven of the bases. It was apparent that, with any sudden influx of inductees, there would be impossible shortages of barracks spaces, hospital beds and everything else.

"They would have been training with brooms instead of rifles, and they would have been in tents, but the tents wouldn't have been manufactured yet. The SSS could process the names, but the military couldn't process them into recruits in less than 12 months."